Voters will decide whether to extend terms of county officials

Voters in November will decide whether El Paso County’s commissioners and other elected officials can seek a third term in office.

On a 4-1 vote, the county commission sent three questions to the ballot on Thursday.

One would allow commissioners to seek a third four-year term. The second question would extend term limits by four years for the county treasurer, clerk and recorder, assessor and surveyor. The third question would extend the term of the  district attorney. The changes, if approved in November, would take hold for the 2012 election.

(See The Gazette's voter guide here.)

Commissioner Sallie Clark said the measures would let voters override the 1994 constitutional amendment that set term limits throughout Colorado.

“I have heard from a lot of my constituents who say ‘We wish you could run again,’” said Clark, who is in her second and final term on the county panel unless term limits are changed.

The county has gone to voters over term limits before. In 2006, voters gave the sheriff a third term, and in 2001 allowed the county coroner to serve indefinitely. Voters have voted down term limit extensions for other countywide offices.

Commissioner Jim Bensberg voted against sending the questions to the ballot. He said that because voters have so many other weighty issues to decide, it’s the wrong time to ask the term limits question.

“There is such a thing as ballot fatigue,” said Bensberg, who is losing the $87,000-per-year commissioner job later this year due to term limits.

While term limits were a nationwide movement that drew crowds in 1994, they don’t pack that kind of emotional punch now.

The commission zipped through three votes to put the questions on the ballot without a word of opposition from the small audience.

Term limits were approved in Colorado and several other states amid a campaign that said such limits would curb corruption and allow new blood to flow into government.

Term limits were a key GOP theme in the 1994 election, and the Republicans won several seats by using them as an argument to oust entrenched Democratic incumbents.

Opponents of term limits said the restrictions take away the ability of voters to leave effective politicians on the job.

Commissioner Wayne Williams said that in El Paso County, voters have long set their own form of term limits by defeating incumbents. The most recent victim was District Attorney John Newsome.

“I just think the people should be allowed to decide this,” said Williams, who is leaving the commission at the end of the year due to term limits and is running against Democrat Tom Mowle for the county Clerk and Recorder’s job.

Williams said because the county is already asking voters whether medical marijuana businesses should be banned from unincorporated areas, adding the term limit question won’t add cost to the election.

Commissioner Amy Lathen, who voted to ask for term limit extensions, said most counties in Colorado have already extended the time their politicians can spend in office.

Of the state’s 64 counties, 35 have extended terms for county offices.